The following prior art references are cited in this application.
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Consumers are increasingly seeking “anti-aging” products that treat wrinkling, creasing and furrowing of the skin. The advent of costly and painful cosmetic injections for treating expression lines of the face has heightened interest in finding topical alternatives that are effective and non-invasive.
Expression lines are a distinct type of wrinkle that occurs on the facial skin at an early adult age. They are related anatomically to the facial expression muscles in the periorbital, glabella, forehead, and perioral areas. The activity of these muscles during the actions of smiling, squinting, pursing of the lips, and frowning places greater physical stress upon the overlying skin than in other areas in the face. For this reason expression lines are less responsive to those topical treatments that focus upon the non-contractile elements of cutaneous anatomy, such as the epidermis. In order to be most effective treatment of expression lines should also entail the inhibition of the facial expression muscles and the muscle fiber elements associated with the dermis. A myriad of substances that relax striated muscle fibers are described in the cosmetic prior art. The problem is that the muscle relaxants of the prior art are either slow acting, they are not potent enough, or the inhibitory effects are not cumulative. Furthermore, none of these muscle relaxants reduce facial muscle actions. A newly discovered plant extract that rapidly inhibits deformation of the dermis enables substances that repair and rejuvenate it to become more effective.
An expression line is formed when a muscle of facial expression contracts or shortens itself beneath the skin and then relaxes and returns to its resting length. The skin can also shorten and rebound, but not as well as the muscle. Therefore, the skin tends to buckle and fold inward as the muscle contracts. The ability of the skin to withstand the shortening and rebounding of the underlying muscle is related to the quality and health of the upper dermis. With increasing age the thickness, elasticity, collagen content. and reparative ability of the dermis diminishes. The skin can no longer rebound from this action and the fibrous intercellular matrix of the dermis weakens and breaks. At this point the skin has developed a permanent wrinkle. The wrinkle will continue to deepen as this area of the skin is subjected to the perpetual stress of facial expressions.